Jade Regent – Forest of Spirits, Session 2

Second Session (12 page pdf) – It’s hardcore hobgoblin warfare time in the earth under the House of Withered Blossoms. We breach a defended curtain walle, conduct a zippo raid on a ville, and blitzkrieg the keep. And then it was a fight to the death with the Swine Shogun!

Fighting hobgoblins is always pleasingly tactical. They are very martial and believe in fortifications and preparedness. At lower levels that’s quite a problem. At our level, with the flying and invisibility and walls of ice, it’s not so insurmountable.

Our first task was to breach a reinforced gate through an arrow slit and murder hole encrusted kill zone. Then we had to go through a gauntlet. Then there was a whole underground village of hobs surrounding a keep.

It was some good fighting; the hobs weren’t pushovers but we had enough juice to not get trapped under fire too much. The gate and gauntlet were dicey, the village was less of a problem – we were up a tall cliff and could see most of the place, so flame arrow plus direct damage spells pretty much chewed up the place. It’s nice to also be able to cut loose and scrag a village, sometimes the “level appropriate” blinder that 3e+ got into doesn’t allow for you to really go to town on some hapless enemy forces.

We decided to just bypass the keep – going up to the front of it was silly, we just flew up to the bridge it was protecting and made them come to us. They came to us and they were tough; I had to use samurai resolve to stay standing after a full attack from the guy. Harwynian wanted to d-door us out of there but Jacob and I got in a lucky combo – the Swine Shaman failed an initial Hold Person save and I lopped his head right off. Save or die, baby!